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THE NECESSITY OF CONTINUED SELF-EDUCATION. 



AN ADDRESS 



TO THE 



GRADUATING CLASS OF S. C. COLLEGE, 

AT COMMENCEMENT, 

ON THE FIRST OF DECEMBER, MDCCCLI. 

BY FRANCIS LIEBER, 

OP THE FRENCH INSTITUTE. 



PRINTED BY ORDER OP THE GOVERNOR. 



COLUMBIA, S. C. 

STEAM-POWER PRESS OF A. S. JOHNSTON. 
MDCCCLI. 



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NECESSITY OF CONTINUED SELF-EDUCATION. 



AN ADDRESS 



TO THE 



GRADUATING CLASS OF S. C. COLLEGE, 



AT COMMENCEMENT, 



X>N THE FIRST OF DECEMBER, MDCCCLI. 




BY FRANCIS IIEBER, 

OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE. 



PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNOR. 



s 






COLUMBIA, S. C. 
STEAM-POWER PRESS OF A. S. JOHNSTON. 

b I A 

MDCCCLI. 



A PREFATORY WORD. 



It is not common that so small a publication as this, is preceded by 
a preface ; but some circumstances connected with the following Address 
are believed of sufficient weight to ask the reader's indulgence for a few 
remarks. 

Immediately after the delivery of the Address a distinguished mem- 
ber of our College government spoke to the author, of the copy of the 
Address. The answer was that there was none, and that the speech 
had been delivered from a mental arrangement and disposition of the 
subject. When, therefore, that gentleman, at a subsequent period, pro- 
posed an obliging vote of thanks to the orator, in the Board of Trustees, 
he did not insert the request for a copy, because he thought the writing 
out of a copy would give too much trouble to the speaker, whose time 
happens to be greatly occupied at this period. His Excellency, the Gov- 
ernor, ex officio President of the Board of Trustees, mentioned this fact 
to the deliverer of the Address, who declared his readiness to write 
down all he remembered of the remarks he had made to the graduating 
class ; and Governor Means at once politely requested him to do so, 
that it might be printed. The order could no longer issue from the 
Board, because it had adjourned. 

This has been done. The author, when addressing his young friends, 
left out several subjects on which he had intended to speak, partly 
forgetting them in the flow of the moment, partly because he was afraid 
of occupying too much time. These omitted subjects he has felt at lib- 
erty to add, in the copy prepared for the press ; but he has added no- 
thing else. It has been thought necessary to make this explanation for 
those readers of the Address, if there be any, who have heard it when 
it was delivered. 

The following is the resolution of the Board of Trustees : 

" Unanimously resolved, That the thanks of this Board be given to 
Dr. Lieber, for the readiness with which, at the request of the Board, 
he undertook the performance of the duties of President of the College, 
at the late Commencement ; for the propriety with which he discharged 
these duties, and especially for the able Address which, at such short 
notice, he made to the graduating class." 



ADDRESS 



TO THE 



GRADUATING CLASS OF 1851, 

SOUTH CAROLINA COLLEGE. 



Young Gentlemen : 

The Trustees, your and my superiors, have appointed me to 
occupy the President's chair for this day, and in this capacity 
it devolves upon me to address to you those farewell remarks 
which it is the appropriate custom to deliver to young men in a 
position in which you now stand before me — with the staff in 
your hand, as it were, to sally forth into the broad and open fields 
of practical life, and rugged paths too, there to find your profes- 
sions, your support, your names, your reputations, and that ex- 
act place which you will occupy in the great social system that 
surrounds you. When this call was made upon me by the 
Board of Trustees, I thought that it would evince no high de- 
gree of public spirit were I to decline it. I readily accepted the 
appointment, but I did not do so without anticipating difficulties 
and embarrassments which I now find surrounding me in their 
fullest extent. 

Remarks, such as I am going to address to you, ought to be 
conveyed with all the impressiveness with which words can 
proceed from mortal lips to mortal ears; for they are the last 
words which an affectionate teacher, in the name of an affection- 
ate institution, addresses to youth who have been nursed and 
nurtured by its care and solicitude. Their impression ought to 
be lasting and indelible ; but the impressiveness of solemn words 
publicly delivered depends in a measure upon the dignity of the 



6 ADDRESS. 

speaker. I do not refer to that native dignity of thought and 
word which consists in the fact that ideas worthy of the occa- 
sion be presented in simple language — I mean to take care that 
my words do not lack this species of dignity — but I speak of 
that incidental yet not inefficient dignity which flows from the 
plenitude of authority and the fulness of office. In this I am 
deficient. You know that I do not stand before you fully robed 
in the mantle of office : but when I consider how long we have 
walked, hand in hand, on the path of knowledge and in the pur- 
suit of truth, I cannot help thinking that my words will find an 
entrance into your soul, and there strike some chords that will 
vibrate long and loud. 

But there is another and a greater difficulty. Where, in fact, 
am I standing ? I stand here where an orator has stood of wide 
and high American repute,* whose wealthy eloquence has often 
gushed forth from this very spot in all the native energy of his 
Saxon idiom, perfumed with the fragrance of a scholar's mind 
and the aroma of a cultivated taste — a speaker whose oratory 
is yet fondly remembered by the humblest classes of our people. 
It is not more than a twelve-month ago that one of them, as they 
assemble around the house of justice, on judgment days, said, 
within my hearing, when your late President passed by, with 
his infirm step, with which, unfortunately, you are familiar — 
pointing at him, the humble man said to his neighbors : " That 
man used to talk like a mocking-bird.'" And may I not add to 
this graceful testimonial, spontaneous like our grateful jasmine in 
the uncultivated woods, the words of the greatest Italian poet, 
when he addresses Virgil as " the fount whence issues forth a 
broad, deep stream of speech?" He used to speak so well ! He 
was a master of the breathing word, while to my tongue still 
cleaves the accent which we receive in our mothers' first and 
fondest words. I shall suffer from a constant comparison forced 
upon your minds by the contrast between the words you have 
heard here, and, humanly speaking, ought this day to listen 
to ; and the words you will hear in reality. It is therefore no 
phrase of mere civility if I ask for indulgence and that kindly 
ear which you have often lent me in my lecture room, where no 

* The Hon. William Campbell Preston. 



ADDRESS. 7 

comparison detracted from your attention. Give it to me fully — 
I mean the attention of your soul, not only that of your mind. 
And, without any farther words on myself and my difficulties, I 
proceed to my remarks, which I think it proper to impress upon 
you at this, the last hour of our academic relation. 

Young gentlemen and friends, when a parent dismisses a child, 
when friends sever from friends, when a brother leaves his sis- 
ter, or a son parts from his mother, it is the universal custom, 
because founded in our nature, to give a token of remembrance to 
the parting one — a choice book, a bible, a ring, a jewel, a well- 
wrought style, a fine weapon — something or other which may 
last and awaken fond remembrances, growing in fondness as 
the separation becomes longer and more distant. I, too, will 
give you a precious jewel at this our parting hour. Keep it 
and let it never be lost by any negligence ; keep it bright, and 
the light which radiates from this precious stone will do good to 
your soul. I have taken it from this casket,* which contains 
multitudes of jewels, in an inexhaustible treasury. My jewel is 
this passage : " Take fast hold of instruction ; keep her ; let her 
not go; for she is thy life." — Take fast hold of instruction ; keep 
her, let her not go, for she is thy life. 

Instruction is your life, and you are bid to keep it, not to let 
it go, to cling to it, to hug it to your soul like a bridal friend. 
Whether the original Hebrew word, rendered in English by the 
term instruction, means instruction proper, or knowledge or wis- 
dom, or chastisement and training with teaching, it is the same 
for my present purpose. It either means the knowledge of truth, 
and wisdom flowing from it, or it designates the means to obtain 
this end, and which can have value only because it leads to that 
end. Otherwise, instruction could not be called, so forcibly, 
our life. 

I leave it to the minister and the priest, or to the silent medi- 
tation in the retired closet, to find out the full spiritual sense of 
this passage. My intention is simply to dwell upon a subject 
connected with the method of keeping knowledge and instruc- 
tion, of not letting them go, and of taking fast hold of them. 

You could commit no more fatal error than if you were 

*A bible lying near the speaker. 



8 ADDRESS. 

to suppose that, as you leave these academic walls behind 
you, and as you pass through yonder gate, never more to 
return in the same capacity in which you have dwelled among 
us, you may leave your books, and, with them, all farther 
pursuit of knowledge, behind you ; that you have now finished 
your education, and that the diploma I have this moment given 
you, in the name of the College, constitutes a dividing mark 
between a period of acquiring knowledge and that of its exclu- 
sive application to practical pursuits. All that we, your teach- 
ers, could possibly have done, although a very Aristotle had 
been among us, and a nascent Bacon among you, would still 
have been no more than to point out to you which way the road 
lies, to indicate to you what fields are stretching behind the 
mountain, which you have not yet been able to climb, and to 
imbue you with a quickening love of truth, as well as to teach 
you the method of pursuing knowledge. More, no teacher of 
the young can do. He can instruct, but the acquisition of know- 
ledge depends upon you, and must necessarily form your chief 
occupation now as you enter the period of manhood. Instruc- 
tion comes from without, and can be given ; knowledge must be 
acquired within, and is obtained by each man's own and inde- 
pendent action. For this is, after all, the distinction between 
instruction, information, learning, and even erudition on the one 
hand, and knowledge on the other ; that the first come from 
without, and are acquired by a purely mental process ; but when 
information is distilled into an essence which becomes part and 
parcel of our soul and self — when it ripens into a principle of ac- 
tion — when it becomes a foundation of wisdom and a light of 
essential truth, then it is knowledge, and then only so. Experi- 
ence must come to aid its progress and maturing ; I mean by 
experience, not the merely passing through successive events, 
however remarkable they may be, but the passing through 
events and changes with observing attention, a discriminating 
eye, and a truthful disposition. You see, that your self- educa- 
tion, your most essential training, now only begins, and must 
never cease as long as you live, if you have resolved to be true 
to yourselves and are conscious that your Maker has not placed 
you here in order to pass as loitering idlers through an unmean- 



ADDRESS. 9 

ing life, passively determined by the world without, instead of 
aiding in determining it, as resolute and good men. There is 
no such demarcating line as is commonly snpposed between the 
so called self-educated man, and him that has had " an educa- 
tion." It is, indeed, of great importance whether a boy has the 
means of going to school or not ; but as no person can cultivate 
his mind by his own unaided and spontaneous efforts, and with- 
out owing his culture, in a great measure, to the ideas which are 
constantly exchanging in the society in which he lives, and 
which reach him in a thousand rays from the institutions and 
labours, and motive powers of his period, so, on the other hand, 
is every one that is able, substantial, or distinguished in any 
sphere, be it in the useful or fine arts, or politics, in literature or 
the law, so far as he is prominent and of substantial value, 
a self-educated man, and only able or distinguished so far as 
self-culture has carried him. Without it, instruction glides 
off as a dew-drop from a glossy leaf. Without it, information is 
a garment, not a living part of the body. Go then to work and 
make yourselves men. We have tried to give you the chisel ; 
now fashion the marble. Every thing henceforth depends upon 
yourselves. But if I have thus placed knowledge far above in- 
struction, I feel sure that none of yon, who know me so well, 
can think for a moment that I undervalue instruction. Far 
from it. Very much indeed must now-a-days be learned with 
unrelaxing perseverence, merely to keep on a level with the ac- 
tive and manful thinkers and acters of our time. Besides, in- 
struction is like virtue. You cannot stand still. Either you 
keep increasing them with vigilance and zeal, or you fall back. 
They either grow stronger and wider every day, or they wither, 
shrink and decay. 

Therefore, take fast hold of knowledge, keep it, let it not go, 
for it is your life. If this behest has been true at any time, 
and with reference to the young and old of any period, it seems 
to me to be peculiarly so at our own epoch. For, if I misiake 
not, we are living in a period of intense and comprehensive 
activity ; a period which possibly resembles the agitated age 
of the Reformation in its universal restlessness, yearning and 
heaving ; in its rearing and acquiring, and destroying and ex- 



10 ADDRESS. 

ploding ; in its doubting, its inquiring temerity, and its reas- 
suring and falling back upon past things ; in its feverish un- 
rest, and lofty, calming comprehensiveness ; in its embittered 
struggles and its enlarging humanity. 

I am well aware that we are ever inclined to consider our own 
age a peculiar and prominently important one, for the same rea- 
son that the present pain is always the sharpest, and the present 
enjoyment the highest. A mole hill close before the eyes of a 
resting wanderer on the sward shuts out from his sight an entire 
alpine chain at a distance ; but after all allowances and due de- 
ductions have been made, and reasoning with the assumed im- 
partiality of a historian some centuries hence, I still believe that 
your lot has been cast in no period of repose, but on the contra- 
ry, in one of great agitation in all the spheres of action, know- 
ledge, sympathy and aspiration. 

Do you turn your eyes to the natural sciences and philosophy ? 
There you see the Frenchman who points to the heavens, and 
says : In that spot you must find a planet, as far beyond Uranus 
as Uranus is beyond Saturn, at thirty times our own distance 
from the sun. And you find the planet. Or you see the Ger- 
man who at length establishes the distance of a fixed star — six- 
ty-three billions of miles off, so that it takes thousands of years 
before the ray of light parting from that orb can reach the tiny 
retina of the observer. Or you see the geologist reading the 
rocks in the bowels of the earth like the pages of a chronicle, in 
which it has pleased the Almighty Chronicler to reveal the pe- 
riods by which He has chosen gradually to shape and change, 
and evoke from successive turmoils, this fair earth of His, until 
it should be fit to receive that being whom He intended to be ca- 
pable of spelling these records, and decyphering His own hiero- 
glyphics. Or you see the naturalist who discovers millions and 
myriads of wonderfully organized beings, infinitely varied, in a 
drop or a single cellule of other animals. You see an Agassiz 
and a Humboldt, like priests of Nature, revealing some of her 
greatest mysteries, showing thought, one thought, the thought of 
God, pervading the universe and its phases. 

Do you turn your eyes to the study of history ? There you 
see the Englishman, a very sapper of History, excavating, and 



ADDRESS. 11 

with rare sagacity and resolution, unveiling that Nineveh, which 
even to the writers of the old Testament, was a place of gray 
antiquity. What an entire volume of history, what an epic, 
what a tragedy in the Sophoclean sense, it seemed to me, when, 
but a few weeks ago, I daily passed from that Crystal Palace — 
itself a type and symbolization of the broad and stirring thoughts, 
and wide sympathies, which move our age — to the British Mu- 
seum, where I stood and meditated before the inscriptions, and 
sculptures, and gigantic images of past, past Nineveh, great and 
grave as the error was, which made millions prostrate themselves 
before them in groping worship, seeking a living God of light in 
soulless, sable stone. Or you see the busy miner of history 
bringing to light multitudes of cherished objects, from the place 
where the Athenian market was ; for, happily, at last it has been 
found, that spot, to which of all others on the globe, the intensest 
interest is attached — a spot which appears to the imagination of 
the historian, radiant like a diamond among coarser and darker 
minerals. Or you perceive every archive ransacked, every coun- 
ty, every life of any importance described, and its description 
made accessible to the public, while in no previous period his- 
toric justice, and calm, enlarged views have found so many 
truthful votaries as in our own. 

Or do you turn your eyes to the science of language ? Philo- 
logy, once comprehending two ancient tongues only, now takes 
within one grasp the Sanscrit, the oldest of all, and the dialect 
of the savage, made known to us by the pioneering missionary. 
Philology has risen from the grammar, to a philosophy of the 
word — the rind which forms around the thought of man when 
ripening for utterance. 

Or do you behold the application of science to the comforts 
and uses of daily life ? There you find the American, who 
attached the electric spark like a wing to the word, so that 
we may imagine it like a mysterious glow-worm, flitting 
through the distance of a thousand miles with a rapidity 
too swift for human language to express it, and out-racing even 
the storm ; reminding us of the worlds, in which the minds of 
Milton and Ariosto moved, when they conceived of beings dart- 
ing through the unresisting ether of the universe, rather than of 



12 ADDRESS. 

the resisting and opaque reality which usually surrounds us, 
and grudgingly recedes before the boldest and brightest concep- 
tions of constructive genius. How could I enumerate the most 
important applications only, which in our half century have 
been made, and through which it enjoys a full measure of hu- 
manizing comfort 7 

How could I with justice, point out to you the rapidity with 
which many of the most important improvements have ad- 
vanced? In the year 1830 the first railway was laid ; in 1838 
the first steam packet crossed the Atlantic ; and in about five 
years later, I left this town to visit my birth place, and from 
Columbia to Berlin I proceeded on land, river and sea, exclu- 
sively by steam. Indeed you might now leave this spot and go 
to Calcutta, through our own country, across the Atlantic, through 
England, Belgium, Germany, the Adriatic, the Mediterranean, 
the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, around Ceylon, and never 
be carried by any other propelling power than steam, except, as 
yet, the short distance across the Isthmus of Suez. The word 
of Gallilei, " And yet it moves," has become true in more than 
one sense. 

Do you turn your attention to the sulject of Labour — one of 
the indicative elements of every stage of civilization ? You 
will find that one of the most characteristic features of our age, 
consists in the close union, the wedlock of Knowledge and La- 
bour, and the utmost stretch of productiveness to which labour 
has been carried. Knowledge has become dis-aristocratized, if 
I may make a word, and Labour has become dignified. So 
great and searching a change has produced many revolutions in 
the whole state of human things, and will produce infinitely 
more — for certain weal in the end, for some woe in the transi- 
tion. I do not maintain that all these changes have been di- 
rectly for the better ; there is no struggle in the course of civili- 
zation that does not leave its dead and wounded on the battle 
field. Nor do I say, that the great idea of the dignity of labour 
is not carried at times to an extreme, in which it appears as a 
distorted caricature, even to hideousness. We need only think 
of the French communism ; but remember, how often I have 
endeavoured to impress upon your minds the truth, that there is 



ADDRESS. 13 

no great and woiking idea in history, no impulse which passes 
on through whole masses, like a heaving wave over the sea, no 
yearning and endeavour which gives a marking character to a 
period, and no new institution or new truth, which becomes the 
substantial addition that a certain age adds to the stock of pro- 
gressive civilization — that has not its own caricature, and dis- 
torted reflection along with it. No Luther rises with heroic 
purpose, without being caricatured in a Carlstadt. The miracle 
wrought by Him, to whom it was no miracle, is mimicked in 
toyish marvels for easy minds. The communists are to the 
dignity of labour, what the hideous anabaptists were to the 
reformation, or tyrannical hypocrites in England to the idea of 
British liberty in a Pym or Hampden. There was a truth of 
elementary importance conveyed in the saying of former ages, 
however irreverent it may appear to our taste, that Satan is the 
mimicking and grimacing clown of the Lord. I will go farther 
and say, that no great truth can be said to have fairly begun to 
work itself into practice, and to produce, like a vernal breath, a 
new growth of things, if we do not observe somewhere this histo- 
ric caricature. Has Christianity itself fared better? Was the first 
idea, which through a series of errors led to the anchorites and 
pillar saints, not a true and holy one ? Does not all fanaticism 
consist in recklessly carrying a true idea to an extreme, irrespec- 
tive of other equally true ones, which ought to be developed 
conjointly, and under the salutary influence of mutual modifica- 
tion? There is truth in the first idea whence the communist 
starts, as much so as there is truth in the idea, which serves as 
a starting post for the advocate of the ungodly theory of divine 
right ; but both carry out their fundamental principle to mad- 
ness, and, ultimately, often run a-muck in sanguinary ferocity. 
Do not allow yourself, then, to be misled by these distortions, or 
to be driven into hopeless timidity, which would end in utter ir- 
resolution, and a misconception of the firmest truths. 

If you direct your attention to the wide sphere of the law, 
you will discover the same activity and energy in rearing and 
destroying. Indeed, this too, is a prominent feature of our age. 
In no period of our race, have so many and so comprehensive 
changes taken place in so short a time. The penal code of 



14 ADDRESS. 

almost every civilized community has been remodelled. The 
trial has been made more just and fair. An entire new science, 
the science of punilion or penology has been struck out. The 
civil law of the different nations, and their very systems of judi- 
cature, are daily mending and remodelling. The law of nations, 
that strong cement of peoples, which was conceived by the great 
Grotius, as the science of politics was gestated by one man, 
Aristotle, has much expanded and been improved in our times, 
and is daily uniting more firmly the tribes of our race into one 
fold and one vast commonwealth of nations ; and in diplomacy an 
essential change has been wrought, by discussing the conflicting 
rights and interests of nations with entire publicity, of which 
we have the honour of having set the example. 

If you examine the diffusion of knowledge, I had almost said 
the profusion of knowledge, you will find in that sphere, too, an 
unheard of activity, from the national systems of primary edu- 
cation, to the enlargement of universities and academies, from 
the anatyser in silent retirement, to the boldest expeditions, from 
the traveller in Africa, and the New-Englander who caused 
himself to be landed, lone and daring, on the shores of Japan, 
to the polar knight-errant of science, persevering with divine 
obstinacy, which seems to become the bolder, the more irrevoca- 
bly it appears to be written on those piles of bergs : Thus far 
and no farther. Then, reflect for a moment on the means of 
spreading knowledge, and of the increased communion between 
men. It almost appears as if Guttenberg's sublime conception 
has been only fulfilled in our age : and along with the widely 
spread printing, and the telegraph, which the other day car- 
ried a message from New York to New Orleans and back again — 
a distance little short of four thousand miles — in a few minutes, 
we have the penny postage, a quickening agent of civilization, 
scarcely less important than the type. There is no branch of 
industry or commerce, which does not receive its beneficial in- 
fluence, and the affections of men are as deeply indebted to Row- 
land Hill, as the busiest producers and exchangers. You have 
parents ; I have children ; and we know the blessed luxury of 
freely writing to those we love, without a heavy postage-tax on 
our affections. 



ADDRESS. 15 

How is it in agriculture and commerce? How in mental phi- 
losophy ? Every one initiated in her solemn temple, knows full 
well that here, too, we have reached the portal of a new era. 

How is it in the wide domain of charity ? The middle ages 
scattered charity with a profuse, though not always with a judi- 
cious hand, like the Mohametan who, with a pious intention, or- 
ders bags full of coin to be thrown among a scrambling multi- 
tude ; but no age, I believe, has equalled ours in a general at- 
tention to the toiling masses, and in its varied attempts to help 
the necessitous — not only the ragged and the starving. The 
list of charitable societies in London alone, which Lamartine 
lately gave to the public, furnishes an ample subject for earnest 
reflection. And if our age had produced nothing but the Rag- 
ged School, the Savings Bank, and the Wash-house for the 
Poor, I should feel warranted in saying that the throb of charity 
is not unknown to its heart. I told you that I lately beheld the 
remains of Nineveh's grandeur. In the same city, whither the 
emblems of Assyrian sway have travelled — a symbolic indica- 
tion of the direction which the course of history itself has taken, 
from Asia through the South of Europe, to the northern nations — 
in the same city where the wonder of our age was erected, the 
greatest monument of Peace and Good Will, there too I have 
repeatedly visited the Ragged School and those rescue schools 
for young abandoned thieves, and offending girls, far more diffi- 
cult to reclaim than thieves ; and I believe that man was never 
engaged in a more christian and holy cause. If we justly observe 
that Christianity has produced by far the vastest changes in so- 
ciety, government, national intercourse, commerce and literature, 
simply because it changed the inner man, and, therefore, human- 
ity itself; we ought to add: And it has been able to produce the 
Ragged School. Kings and governments have in all ages occu- 
pied themselves, at times, with high emprizes ; but it was left 
to our day to hear monarchs mention in their pithy throne 
speeches, addressed to assembled parliaments, the Primer, the 
Penitentiary, and the Potatoe, — the poorest food for the poorest 
people. These are signs that stand for multitudes of things. 

And how do we find matters in that vast region of politics — the 
main staple of what is commonly called History ? Hardly has 



16 ADDRESS. 

Europe emergsd, we cannot say recovered, from multifarious 
revolutions, which made her quiver from one end to the other, 
when everywhere indications are found of a new and far more 
serious convulsion, in which she will wade, knee-deep, through 
blood. There is agitation in the whole field of politics in our 
own country. Every mind, down to the least observing, is oc- 
cupied with ideas of the last moment. Freedom or unfreedom, 
change or unchange, progress, stability, or regress, are the watch- 
words every where. And what is true of politics is no less so 
of religion. Papacy, protestantism, Judaism — all partake of the 
same stirring, rising, swelling activity. Nor is it different in the 
fine arts. An age of purer taste and wider production has suc- 
ceeded a period of false and narrow refinement ; and the sculp- 
tor and painter, the proud servants of History and brethren of 
Poetry, are dotting many a land with their monuments, the ef- 
fects of a high civilization, and the promoters of a higher one. 

Over all this straining activity spreads a public opinion, which 
has never been equalled in extent, distinctness and vigor. In 
antiquity public opinion was enclosed and limited by the city 
wall. In the present time it hovers over and unites many en- 
tire countries into one community, deeming even the Atlantic 
as nought, and making the poet's mare dissociabile an unmean- 
ing term. It is general, like knowledge itself. It has left the 
confined spot on earth, and its corruscations are seen by all and 
felt by king and kaiser as by the plainesc citizen that is not 
wholly insulated within his surrounding society. 

I have been able to direct your attention to a few of the most 
prominent points only, like a guide, when he leads a party of 
travellers toward the Alps, and points out some peaks of the co- 
lossal mountain group. He can show but a few at the time, but 
between them are lying thousands of no less important details. 
Yet I believe I have convinced you of the fact, which I was de- 
sirous of vindicating, that you have been born in an agitated, 
and energetic age, in which it is necessary to be awake and 
resolute, diligent and manly, in order to keep up with the push- 
ing, jostling crowd on the high road ; otherwise you will fall 
back among the stragglers, and your chance will be lost. Whe- 
ther the jury of historians, which will be empannelled in after 



ADDRESS. 17 

ages, will find a verdict that our period has made out a claim to 
have been a great age, we must leave to them ; but an active, in- 
tensely energetic age, it certainly seems to me ; and you must 
gather more and more knowledge, in order to be able correctly to 
observe, and wisely to discriminate, lest the whole will become 
to you a tumultuous and disheartening confusion — the very op- 
posite to that mental peace, without which wisdom is impos- 
sible. 

Add to what I have said the two truths which I have spread 
before you in the lecture room, that all knowledge must be far 
in advance of its application before it can be applied ; and that 
you can possess full dominion over any province of knowledge 
only when you have a considerable acquaintance with adjacent 
districts — and your own conscience must tell you that your act- 
ive self-education must be unbroken and unflagging. Willfully 
to neglect it would be nothing less than levity, and I now sol- 
emnly remind you how often, in the course of my instruction in 
history and political philosophy, I have shown you that, of all 
corrosives in the whole catalogue of ethical poisons, levity is far 
the worst — far worse, in the incalculable and wide-spread mis- 
chief it produces, or allows to grow in rank profusion, than pas- 
sion, and even positive, bold political vice. 

There are so many thoughts and feelings crowding upon a 
man's mind and soul on an occasion like this, that it is difficult 
to choose — and, when the choice of the subject has been made, 
to end. I will follow the advice of Martin Luther. He gives 
it as the ninth and last of his serious advices to a minister, that 
he should know when to stop in good lime, and before the sub- 
ject appears to him wholly exhausted. 

I now only add my last adieu, knowing that I speak in the 
name of all your teachers, and thus say : Be just, be pure, be 
truthful, be charitable, be resolute, be temperate and void of lev- 
ity ; and God will bless you. 



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